The Attack on “All-American Muslim”

Dearborn, Michigan, is the city in America with the highest proportion of Muslims. That is not a new development. Immigrants from the Middle East began arriving in the area generations ago, when jobs building cars were still a lure—which should give a sense of the community’s vintage. Some still work in the auto industry, including Angela Jaafar, who is a marketer, and is married to Mike, a deputy chief in the sheriff’s office. The Jaafars and their children form one of five Dearborn families featured on “All-American Muslim,” a reality show, on TLC, created by some of the same team behind “Real Housewives of New York.” The show has become the target of an ugly campaign by a group called the Florida Family Association, which calls it “propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.” That someone, somewhere, would yell at the television when presented with images of Arab-Americans getting married or ready for school or running a football practice is sad, but might not be surprising. What is more remarkable, and even alarming, is that the group’s campaign persuaded Lowe’s, the home-improvement chain, to pull its advertising from “All-American Muslim.”

The Florida Family Association says that Lowe’s is not the only sponsor it has driven away. That is hard to know, since ads are bought and sold all the time. Lowe’s, however, made no secret of its decision to walk away: “Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views,” it said in a Facebook post. “As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.”

That is, at a minimum, weak on Lowe’s part. Why would it be so responsive to a letter that contained lines like, “One of the most troubling scenes occurred at the introduction of the program when a Muslim police officer stated, I really am American. No ifs ands and buts about it.” Are those the sort of words that cause panics? The actual complaint that the Florida Family Association has is particular and peculiar: that “All-American Muslim” is dangerous because its subjects aren’t. The Florida Family Association isn’t pretending that these people—the Amens, the Aoudes, the Bazzy-Aliahmads, the Jaafars, and the Zabans—aren’t exactly who the program says they are. (It’s a fairly diverse group that includes, even within those families, women who wear the hijab and ones who don’t) When it says that the show is an effort to “inaccurately portray Muslims in America,” it is rejecting that reality in favor of stereotypes. In other words, the truth is false if it does not look the way one thought it would. It is seized by the fear of a bland Muslim.

Not even the Florida Family Association is saying that TLC is letting terrorists use “All-American Muslim” as a megaphone with which to say anything hateful or violent. (Although, as James Poniewozik points out at Time, it does say other things about the show’s content that are “flatly false.”) Rather, the Association, in its appeal to advertisers, says that TLC was spreading propaganda by “excluding” extremists. That is a funny word to choose, suggesting, as it does, that the extremists are somehow lorn and abandoned, and that the channel might have done better to work in some jihadi videos in every episode.

Instead, “All-American Muslim,” as a show, is enjoyably domestic and reasonably intelligent, judging from the first couple of episodes. Some of the scenes look like they could be taken from a Lowe’s commercial, as when, in the first episode, Nawal, who is very pregnant, looks around the nursery she and her husband Nader are setting up and talks about how much they still have to do. Alyssa Rosenberg, at ThinkProgress, said that the show was sweet and also adept at carrying on a conversation about faith in one’s everyday life. (For that, she got accused of “bootlicking” by Pamela Geller, who spends a fair amount of her time raging at Islam.)

Thanks to both its quality and to a general dismay at Lowe’s, ads for the next episode are reportedly sold out; Russell Simmons, the music executive, tweeted about his efforts to buy time as an expression of support. Many people are very angry at Lowe’s, and they are right to be. In its Facebook post, the company mentioned a vague commitment to “diversity.” Perhaps it practices that in other areas, but in this one it chose a path of blindness. What is shameful about the company’s decision is that it bent to the suggestion that, simply by depicting Muslims as “nice” Americans, a show became too controversial for it to engage with.

This same notion was presented another way when Anderson Cooper invited two couples from “All-American Muslim” on his show—Nawal and Nader and Shadia and Jeff—and also, in his studio audience, a woman named Melanie who had been petitioning to get the show cancelled. Cooper asked her if she thought it were possible to be “a good Muslim and a good American.” She answered, “I really don’t.”

Cooper: So you’re saying that the millions of Muslims who are living here are not good Americans—you’re saying that the people on this stage are not good Americans.

Melanie: What I’m saying is that you’re either one or the other.

Cooper: You’re saying that you’re one or the other.

Melanie: I’m not saying that they can’t be Americans. But then I’m also—what I’m saying is that they’re not true Muslims. So, I mean, I would ask the question to them: Are you living by the Koran, are you living by the prophet Mohammed, are you doing what you’re commanded to do?

Be scary, or you are not “true,” never mind how solid you seem and all the facts and dimensions of your life. We are in a dangerous place when people can be told, to their faces, that they are not real—that their identities make no sense, and that they are impossible Americans. It is a realm we are likely to be dwelling in for much of the Presidential campaign, as invective and still cruder stereotypes are thrown around; it is one in which, in the years since 9/11, we have often gotten lost—whether talking about the “Ground Zero mosque” or not talking about the prisoners we hold—and forgotten ourselves, and what our laws, and our values, mean.

There is also an obliviousness in Melanie’s demand to know whether the two couples are really “living by the Koran.” Sharia law really has come to America: it’s just that its enforcers are people who don’t like Islam. Nawal, with more tolerance than many could muster, says she does live by it, “a hundred per cent.” She shouldn’t have had to say so, or to answer the next question Cooper posed: Can she be a good American? “Of course,” she said. And of course she can.